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At the time of Columbus's voyages, the Americas were inhabited by Indigenous Americans, and Columbus later participated in the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Columbus died in 1506, and the next year, the New World was named "America" after Amerigo Vespucci , who realized that it was a unique landmass.
On August 21, 2007, the Northwest Passage became open to ships without the need of an icebreaker. According to Nalan Koc of the Norwegian Polar Institute, this was the first time the Passage has been clear since they began keeping records in 1972. [6] [20] The Northwest Passage opened again on August 25, 2008. [21]
Christopher Columbus [b] (/ k ə ˈ l ʌ m b ə s /; [2] between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian [3] [c] explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa [3] [4] who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day as a national holiday in 1934 (originally observed on October 12) to commemorate the landing of explorer Christopher Columbus in the ...
Route of Columbus's first voyage. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese captain in the service of the Crown of Castile, set out on his first voyage in August 1492 with the objective of reaching the East Indies by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean. Instead of reaching Asia, Columbus stumbled upon the Caribbean islands of the Americas.
Prior to the 19th century, transatlantic crossings were undertaken in sailing ships, and the journeys were time-consuming and often perilous.The first trade route across the Atlantic was inaugurated by Spain a few decades after the European Discovery of the Americas, with the establishment of the West Indies fleets in 1566, a convoy system that regularly linked its territories in the Americas ...
Vasco da Gama headed an expedition which led to the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, and a series of expeditions known as the Carreira da Índia. Since then, the Cape Route has been in use. Christopher Columbus sought to find a westward sea route to the Indian subcontinent, but instead found the way to the Americas.
The Columbian exchange of crop plants, livestock, and diseases in both directions between the Old World and the New World. In 1972, Alfred W. Crosby, an American historian at the University of Texas at Austin, published the book The Columbian Exchange, [2] thus coining the term. [1]